Class-Be Still & Know

Sathyam begins by guiding the following meditation: Whatever it is that you want, whether it is tranquility, peace, satsang, or just sitting together, etc. just give it some attention, so that you are clear, and we don’t waste our time.
The meditation tonight is “Be Still and Know.” Begin by bringing your attention to your heart. Bring your attention down inwardly, and you will find silence. In this silence, say to yourself inwardly “Be Still and Know.” Just sit in this silence. If there are any thoughts that come to your mind, just stay with the silence. Let the mind think and you stay in the silence. Do that for the next few minutes.


Meditation continues for a few minutes.
-Since there are several newcomers tonight, Sathyam asks everyone about their meditation while paying special attention to the newcomers.

Sathyam: We are going to answer a question that one of you asked prior to class starting about yoga. I am very happy you asked this question.
Yoga means union. You do certain postures to open up the flow of energy, so that you can have a divine meditation afterwards. However, in this country, it has almost become a form of exercise, and it has begun to lose its quality and its importance.
So, yoga entails a lot of postures and those postures have to be held, as if you are meditating and there is a rhythm between the breath and the body. To Me, yoga means union. What is this union that we talk about? Every time you are in the depth of silence, you are in union, because the words of the Divine are only heard in the depth of silence. That is how you can hear or feel the existence of Divinity, God, light or whatever you want to call it.
Going back to the question asked earlier about meditation and why even meditate, I don’t know where to begin with that answer! Meditation is silence, and you don’t necessarily have to sit down and meditate with your eyes closed, but at the very beginning you do have to do that.
In the beginning, if we are used to having a lot of thoughts, it is impossible to meditate at the same time. Therefore, there has to be a certain discipline, some of which is to sit down and close your eyes, light a candle, make your space holy, burn incense, etc.
Do whatever you want to do, or do nothing at all. You sit down and you are just quiet. There is the utmost silence within each one of us in this area (pointing to Her heart), and when you tap into it, and when you go there, you have gone to the source of your nature. Our nature is bliss, our nature is happiness, once we go into that space, we are happy!
The reason why most people are not happy, or their happiness is very transient and passing, is because they have not discovered this treasure. Those who are on this path will not think, talk or do, without having tapped into this treasure house.
Now what is this treasure house? Omnipresent, Omniscient & Omnipotent; it is everywhere, All-knowing, and All powerful and that is who we really are. You have likely read this in many books, but believe Me when I tell you that this is who we really are!
This is why we meditate; it is a communion with the Self, which, when it happens, is magnificent. It really is! As a human being we are at the mercy of our own thoughts, emotions and actions as well as those in our families, in the country, in society at large and in the world, etc. At every moment, we are at the mercy of all of it; when you find Home, you are no longer at the mercy of others. This is because you function from a place in you that knows- a place which knows everything.
One of the women asks: Is it spiritual? Is it something in your soul that you communicate with?
Sathyam: It is who you really are and you can call it soul or spirituality. The names do not matter as long as there is an understanding with it. As long as you can understand what it is referring to, you can call it whatever you like. This is why I don’t use a specific name; I use different names because different people are comfortable with different names; some may call it God, others may not feel comfortable with calling it God and like to call it Omnipresent, Truth, Light, etc. I have to say personally, I feel very comfortable with calling it God, but not too many people are comfortable with God in this culture, or can relate to it. I understand and respect that.
There is an Omnipresent - - -, whatever you choose to fill in the blank with, and because of its Omnipresence, we cannot be separate from That. We have no choice because it is Omnipresent! So, when this is understood, there is extreme freedom in that understanding.
To Me meditation is stillness, just stillness. Now, you might say, “How can I be still when my mind thinks all the time?” My answer to this question has always been “the mind thinks, just like the heart beats.” We are fussing over the mind too much. The job of the mind is to think, so allow it to do its job. All we have to do is remove our attention from it.
I have said this many, many times and it is worth saying it again. Almost all of us at one point or another read every thought; every thought gets our attention and it is as if we are enslaved by the thoughts. We read every telegram that comes into our mind in the form of thoughts and we believe it; with every reading there is a change of emotion. For example, the thought comes “I am o.k. today.” We read it and say “ah, I am ok!” The thought comes “I am not a good person,” we read that and say “ah, I am not a good person.”
By the discipline of meditation, you do not read the thoughts anymore or you only read and pay attention to the necessary thoughts. The rest you allow to come and then watch them go.
Therefore, for those of us who think that the mind has power, I want you to know that it is an old philosophy, and if we want to believe it we can, and it is just fine, but I have to tell you that it is a trap. It is best to say that the mind thinks, and then we mind our own business. And what is our own business? Right here (points to Her heart); right here is our own business!
One of the new women asks: Our heart?
Sathyam: Yes, our spiritual heart.
The woman responds: Going back to yoga, I tried meditating a few times and when I did it, I felt good. I have also learned breathing practices in my yoga class and that combined with the meditation have given me more calmness and clarity in the mind. I noticed even right now it really helps to breathe throughout the meditation.
Sathyam: Absolutely! It is a very good combination. The knowledge I was given is that the mind is connected to the breath, as the body is connected to the breath. The harder and the faster you breathe, the more you are involved with your mind and your emotions. Have you noticed when you are angry or excited about something, you are breathing very heavily? That is when there is the most body identification. There are meditations during which our breathing even stops, because there is no need for it. However, when your breathing is calm and has a regular rhythm to it, your mind is calm; they go hand in hand. So, do whatever works for you; I recommend different practices to different people because different things work for different people.
Do you have any other questions before we move on with our topic?
Another newcomer asks: Is there a certain way in which you are supposed to sit? Is there a certain position that is better? I have seen people meditate and their body posture has to be a certain way.
Sathyam: I have been meditating for over 30 years and this is My method: the less you think of your body, the deeper you can go in the meditation; so do not make a fuss over how you sit. When I started to meditate years ago, I learned all the different sitting positions, including the Kundalini moves; I was told to keep My back straight, etc. However, I have discovered through My own experience that it is better to do whatever you can to be comfortable; whether you fold your legs or stretch them out in front of you, etc. honestly it does not matter; sit however way you like.
You will read a lot of books which say it matters, but since you are here tonight, I tell you that it doesn’t matter; as long as your body is not nagging at you and you are comfortable. A lot of Westerners want to sit in the lotus position, and they nearly kill themselves, since they are so uncomfortable sitting that way. Later on, you will get to a point where you don’t really meditate; meditation does you! And at that time you are on your way!
One of the new women asks: You are on your way to what?
Sathyam: You are on your way to that union, or that yoga which we were talking about. It means that your mind has been saturated enough and it is not wandering around, so you no longer have to sit down to meditate. A calm mind is happy. Why is it happy? Because it has sunken into who you really are, to the nature of who you are. We call this nature "Sat-Chit-Ananda” which means “Truth, Awareness, and Bliss.”
A woman says: I believe that we have two bodies; our spiritual body and our mortal body. Meditation as I understand it, is reaching our spiritual body, because the spiritual body is the main body and covers our mortal body. Meditation is uniting the spiritual body with the Godly powers.
Sathyam: Yes, thank you for sharing that. Again, the words may be different or the language may be different, but they all indicate the Omnipresence. That is the Contemplative Meditation we will do tonight.
My teacher in India says that there is only one religion, the religion of love. I Myself don’t particularly have any religion, but does One need a second? (Referring to the Omnipresent) Does One need many? One is One, no matter how you add it up; in spirituality, even one plus one is still only One.
-Someone asks Sathyam about the book and the CD of Most Precious.
In his own words: Where did You get that information?
Sathyam: The CD consists of questions and answers which came from the book that I wrote. The book was not written in an ordinary way. It was a communion; it was created from a very high State of Being. And, we will leave it at that! I am very reluctant to talk about Myself.
Tonight, we will experiment with something that most of you who have been in this class have done before. I call it Contemplative Meditation, and it goes like this: We take the sentence “Since God is Omnipresent, then what can I be?” Now, instead of the word God you can use light, current, Truth, Self, or whatever word you would prefer, because it is One.
You take this sentence in the silence and you really, really dissect it. Focus on Omnipresent- what does that really mean? Once you roll this around in your heart, your consciousness will open up to explain it to you or for you to see it. Something will take place and after that happens, then ask yourself “Then who can I be?” If God is Omnipresent, then what can I be, or who can I be?’
A woman says: What You are saying reminded me of something that happened to me a few years ago, when I was having a heart attack. My husband and my sister started praying for me, and my sister and I both felt the presence of the Lord beside me, and the words we heard were “Be Still and know that I am God.” That is the thought that came to me when you described this practice.
Sathyam remains quiet for a moment and continues: Yes, yes, yes, that is the Truth and nothing but the Truth. I am so touched right now!
Let’s do that. I will give you a few minutes to do that and then I will take you one step further, and then we can share our experiences.
Meditation begins with Sathyam guiding the class:
Since God is Omnipresent … and just make sure you spend some time with that. You must feel it with your deepest, deepest feeling and then say, “Who am I? What can I be?”
(Sathyam gives everyone a few moments to dissect this)
She continues: Take one family member at a time and say to yourself, “If God is Omnipresent, then who can they be?” Let’s just spread this Omnipresence to whoever is close to us, to our home and to our surroundings. And you may be able to go through the whole world with it and even apply it to people whom you don’t like.

Meditation continues for a few minutes.

Sathyam continues: Slowly open your eyes; take your time. Even if you haven’t finished the whole world, come back. By doing this practice, we begin to melt away the individuality; the concept of a good person, a bad person, man, woman, etc. And you begin to see who they really are. In that, there is a security and a release because there is no longer any pretense, because we see the reality of what is going on. And for Me, there is no way that we can know ourselves or God by individualizing. The individualizing has to go, in order to see what is unseen.
Does anyone want to share about this meditation or the contemplation we just did?
Someone in the class says: I kept thinking about what it means that God is Omnipresent? And I thought He is in all things, because He created all things or organized all things. And if that is so, then I am a child of God.
Sathyam: Yes. It is wonderful because we do contemplation and you can tailor this practice to suit you. What you came up with is exactly perfect for here and now because an expansion took place. You said to yourself “Wait a minute … all the saints and sages say that God is Omnipresent, then that means …” You took that in and came up with what you explained. That gives you an expansion; it elevates you from humanhood closer to Christhood.
A woman says: Well, mine was very nice. I saw it as love; that Omnipresence or God is love and we are a part of it because God is everything.
Sathyam: You see, that is another dress tailor made for you specifically. By another dress, I mean that you embody it through your understanding, the way you want to feel it, and what gives it perfection is that it comes from you and it is your own experience.
The same woman continues: Then I took what you said about family members, and I thought about my husband and my children, and dealing with them. I thought about how my love has to grow in order to understand them and to accept them, because life isn’t always perfect.
Sathyam: It is not so much about needing to grow your love, but rather to have love in the form of understanding. When you recognize your children as who they really are, under the sentence “Since God is Omnipresent …” then that understanding creates what needs to be created. That could even be disciplining in the form of love, or caressing in the form of love, etc. The problem these days is that we raise our children based on guidebooks on parenting. We say “this” is good and “this” is bad uniformly.
When we realize or recognize who we really are, and our children as who they really are, everything begins to change, every approach begins to change. Your concern changes, because you realize that who they are is eternal. You are aware of their grandeur, their greatness, and the union they have. However, I am a little bit leery of people saying “I have to have more love.” That is really the mind saying “I need to have more love.”
Once you dwell in a high place, the high place will give you any equipment you need. So, your concern should be to stay in a high place and everything else will be taken care of. It is like saying “I will not have coffee tomorrow.” You are sure to have coffee, if not tomorrow, then the next day. And then you condemn yourself for not being able to keep your resolve and then serve yourself this condemnation as the second cup. It is therefore best to dwell on the Omnipresent, and then “who am I and who are my children?” and let that develop into divine love and a deep understanding.
The same woman says: I was just thinking back, and comparing it to the way it used to be and how I used to put pressure on them to do something, or to be something. I am noticing the difference now and it definitely works better.
Sathyam: In My book Most Precious, I asked how to raise children. The mind asked this question and the answer was “By raising your own consciousness.” Because once you have raised your own consciousness, you have already raised the consciousness of the whole world.
Your vision has changed, thus everything has changed. Everything you look at has changed, so the whole world has changed. We don’t understand that the world is really not outside of us. The world is created through our own vision, so each person’s world is different. So, who is creating what we see? It is a product of our perception. When we look at it this way, we can’t blame anyone or anything. When we see discord, disease or disharmony, we automatically turn towards ourselves and say “Wait a minute, I must not have dwelled in a high place, or I would not have perceived it this way.”
I will give you an example of this, and I am sure all of you have experienced it. 9/11 happens and My husband rushes downstairs to tell Me that something horrible has happened. I didn’t know what had taken place, but I knelt on the ground as I am in the habit of doing. He tells Me that there was a terrorist attack in NYC, and for one brief moment, I fully realized that there is no enemy and there is no friend.
One of the newcomers says: I don’t understand that.
Sathyam: I don’t blame you. What I meant is when you don’t perceive good or bad, you are staying in a high place. Do you understand what I am saying? In other words, if you start with “These people have done this, and those people have done that,” what happens is that you are in the middle of the battlefield. Mentally you have put yourself in the battlefield. The best way to help the situation is to stand on the ground of Divinity. That is My experience and I don’t know if that works for everybody.
The same person continues: There is good, and there is evil that exists in this world- good and bad do exist. Even though we should not judge anyone harshly, we need to be able to discern good from evil, and to choose good over evil.
Sathyam: We should absolutely do that, until we get tired of doing it. I am not disagreeing with you; I am just taking it one step higher. We can say there is good and bad and we see it all the time!
One of the newcomers says: May I say something? There is something that the Lord says which is, “Pray for your enemies. Pray for those that do evil to you, and in praying for them you help them overcome their evil.”
Sathyam: Since you are a good Christian, I am sure you have studied the bible. I have not, but I have somewhat intuitively felt the bible’s teachings. And one of the things that I read by Joel Goldsmith was that when Jesus healed the blind, He did not see a blind man, He just saw God. Do you understand what I am saying? He did not see discord, so discord was not there! Not that he denied there is good or bad; he simply did not behold the lowest in his consciousness, he beheld the highest. When you don’t take any sides and you stay on the ground of your own Divinity, the pictures do change.
The same woman says: They can’t hurt you.
Sathyam: It is really hard to come to grips with what I am saying, and you may not agree with Me, in which case just throw it out. My experience has been that the nature of humanhood is to be on the side of the just, rather than the unjust. Divinity however does not know any sides and in that there is healing.
A man says: I can understand what you are saying, and I can even experience it a little bit sometimes. But by the time I get there, wham, the ego comes in.
Sathyam: Let Me tell you why. It is because you are trying to stand on a wall that is narrow and as soon as you get up there, your foot slips. Your consciousness has to be imbued with it, where you don’t take thought, and you say “I am That.” It has to happen automatically.
I am sorry if I am boring some of you. But there is a reason that you ended up here, even though your mind resists. That reason will be shown to you later on.
A man says: Doesn’t Joel Goldsmith say that beholding only Divinity is the basis for spiritual healing?
Sathyam: When the mind does not behold good or bad, it is spontaneously a healer- without even knowing it. You see, every time you think you are somebody, and you are doing something for somebody, you are back into the humanhood again.
The woman from above says: So, what you are saying is that you should not help people?
Sathyam: No, just don’t take the thought of “I am the doer.” Doing will happen when you stay on the ground of Divinity- God. When you are thinking of that, good things come out of you automatically; because you are keeping your mind in a high place. You end up at the right place at the right time; you help the right person at the crucial moment.
A woman says: Without thinking.
Sathyam: Without thinking
I want all of you to know that what I am saying is worthless, unless you embody it by practicing it. What good is what I am saying, if it is not your experience? The reason we do so many Contemplative Meditations here is so that you can feel it, it becomes yours and you own it. You are able to make it your own so fast because God is Omnipresent, how can you not do it? By the virtue of God’s Omnipresence, you are able to own it; you always have been and always will be able to.
Now, just because we don’t own it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist; it just means that nobody taught us how. Or, it could be that we weren’t interested enough to do it; we were too busy to do it.
Someone asks: Are you speaking about karma? When you think about doing something for somebody, you normally expect something back, but if you do it without thinking, it comes automatically.

Sathyam: You see, when you stay in a high place, there is no question of service. Your Being is of service; you don’t take thought and say “I helped this person today.” It doesn’t even cross your mind; it is your nature. It is like an apple whose nature is to taste a certain way. If you asked an apple “How do you taste?” it would say, “I don’t know, I just taste the way I taste. Taste me and you will know.”
So, when you are one with your nature, or one with that Divinity, God or light, whatever you want to call it, there is nothing to say. How do you explain That which you are? You can explain it only when you don’t feel that you are That.
A woman says: I want to go back to what I was saying about love. I think a lot of us see love in a particular way. But if God is love and God is Omnipresent, then we are a part of love, and everything is a part of love. Then our nature is to love and accept one another; so we know how to love our children, brothers, sisters, etc. When we manifest that love, the separation disappears.
Sathyam: When you say “How can I love?” you are using your mind and you are actually staying away from who you are. So, instead of trying to develop this love, just stay in your State of Being, which we have practiced a few times in this class. We will do it again tonight so the newcomers can learn it. The mind has lots of tricks it can play on you after you leave here. I just want to bombard you with a few things, so in case we never see each other again, you have them and can use them from time to time, if you decide it is a good idea.
A man says: I think the high price of gas is making the human consciousness become more of a family, and people are coming closer together because of it.
Sathyam: Yes, any type of pressure can make people work on their weaknesses. Have you ever seen a pressure cooker? Eventually it has to let the pressure out from somewhere and when it does, there is a relief. Any kind of pressure sends people soul searching. In My own life, any time that I had hardship, it paid off in something greater than that hardship. I am sure it has been this way for all of us. So nothing is really done in vain, if we look at it on a deeper level, and everything can become a waste of time if we don’t.
Before we go, I would like to do something that sums up all that we have been saying tonight about keeping ourselves in a high place, and it demonstrates how we can stay in a place of not judging opposing sides that we may encounter.
If I can ask everyone to just look at the candle and just BE. Have no opinion about the light, its brightness, its size- nothing; just look at it and be completely empty. In that silence, in that stillness, just BE.

Meditation continues for a few minutes.

Sathyam continues: Thank you for coming tonight and any night that we get together. It is not about lecturing, or talking about religion, or this and that. This is a place where all of us who speak different languages, come from different countries and have different religions, get together to acknowledge what IS and dismiss what isn’t.
We have all come from different backgrounds and experiences, some hard, some mediocre, but here and now, by being firmly in our State of Being, we can erase all of our stories and drama and find ourselves in deeper bliss and happiness. This is the time to do it- here and now.
The entire world needs our help, not so much in the form of a handout but rather as help through raising our own consciousness; so that our help comes spontaneously, effortlessly and precisely.
I would like to finish this night by dedicating a song to our newcomers. It will be in two languages.

Sathyam sings the following song first in Farsi and then in English:
You are my mother, you are my father
You are my nearest kin
You are my dearest friend
You are my treasure
You are my wisdom
You are my everything
You are my Lord, my loving Lord

Namaste

CLASS
Be Still & Know
May 2, 2006